I'm looking for a visualiser the will take 2-3 dmx universes, and that I can get the input hardware and software for less than $500. so far all my searches have come up useless.
If you're using the "offline" version of one of the leading consoles, most have a free visualizer built-in. Otherwise, I doubt anything under $500 is going to compare to WYSIWYG, ESP Vision, or Martin Show Designer. You have to pay to play, as they say.
You might look in to a program called Daslight and their interfaces. It's a controller and a 3-D visualizer, but I'm pretty sure that you can order the components seprately for a lower amount of money. However, I don't know if it's gonna cover that 2-3 universe reqirement. That's where you need something like ESP vision.
Another option would be Capture, and they use the EntTecDMX interfaces, which are very reasonably priced.
You can tell that I'm actually awake when I take time to put all of the url coding in to my post.
If you're still stuck, a visualizer that I have used that uses a USB-DMX512 dongle is called Sunlite and can be found here. So that might be one to look at. If not, try Martin Show Designer, Entec DMX, Capture (LSC) or HogPC or something similar.
Let us know if you need any more help